Meet the Leadership

Recently, Mr. Kissel helped create and grow Omnicom’s premier social media agency, Zocalo Group, from start-up to a multi-million dollar agency, securing AOR assignments from Nissan, Dell, DuPont, and others. Previously at DDB Chicago, the largest office of the world's most awarded global advertising network, Mr. Kissel led the agency's two largest businesses, McDonald's and State Farm. Mr. Kissel oversaw State Farm’s marketing communications plan and process, and his team's campaigns earned a 2008 Effie Award and an International Advertising Federation award. Also at DDB, Mr. Kissel helped set McDonald’s marketing strategy, including brand marketing, promotional events, and sports sponsorships. He also led the U.S. launch of the DDB-created “I’m lovin’ it" campaign, which helped McDonald’s earn AdAge’s 2004 Marketer of the Year award. Mr. Kissel has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a member of the Aji Network, and the Economic Club of Chicago.

Mr. Davie led InStadium's organization, capitalization, and development, as well as recruited a world-class group to the company's Boards of Directors and Advisors. Mr. Davie also co-founded and operated TheD3Group, assisting Chicago-based start-up companies with operational, legal, and financing matters, leading to several venture capital investments. Mr. Davie has a B.A. in History from Tulane University, where he played football for the Tulane Green Wave, and a J.D. from The Chicago-Kent College of Law. Mr. Davie previously practiced corporate law and sits on the boards of a number of organizations and operating companies.

As the General Manager for a corporate-owned Culligan Water treatment distributor, he achieved award-winning revenue growth. Woods then worked in Finance at InStadium, where he helped secure outside financing and advertising rights to InStadium’s professional and collegiate sports venues. He then left InStadium to serve as the Vice President of Finance and Controller for The Wall Street Journal Office Network, a private equity-backed state-of-the-art digital media company, where he built and managed an accounting and finance infrastructure necessary to support 1,300 digital billboards. Woods then returned to InStadium as the Vice President of Finance. Woods is also the Co-Founder of Supreme Financial Management, which specializes in providing accounting and financial services to law offices.

Kyle Woods passed the CPA exam and graduated from Miami University with a B.S. degree on Accounting and Finance, and from The University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business with a Masters in Finance and with Magna Cum Laude honors. He resides in Park Ridge, IL with his wife Beth and three daughters.

He recently served as executive consultant for strategic planning/marketing development for Dolan Media Company, a leading provider of business information and professional services to the legal, financial, and real estate sectors. Previously, Mr. Linhardt was the Executive VP of Marketing for Buffets, Inc., a $1.5 billion restaurant company headquartered in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Prior to Buffets, Mr. Linhardt worked for McDonald’s Corporation for 10 years, where he led marketing for key consumer targets (Young Adult; Youth & Family), core equity products (Big Mac; Happy Meals), and key initiatives (Dollar Menu value platform; U.S. Olympic marketing). Mr. Linhardt also helped lead critical relationships with Walt Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, and Wal-Mart. Prior to McDonald's, Mr. Linhardt spent 9 years with Anheuser-Busch, leading the regional marketing teams in Chicago and New York. Mr. Linhardt began his career with two major advertising agencies: DMBB-New York, and Campbell-Ewald-Detroit. He holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

He is a senior marketing executive who understands the importance of strong brands and is a pioneer in both Digital and Direct Marketing communications channels. Mr. Gorski is a change agent who built high-performance teams, developed new capabilities and stimulated significant revenue growth while holding leadership positions at agencies OMD, DraftFCB and Digitas. He has had the opportunity to work with many fantastic clients in virtually every business category. His deepest experience is in Automotive, Financial Services and Healthcare but he has worked with clients in QSR, packaged goods, technology, retail, travel, education and insurance categories. In addition to roles in agency leadership, Mr. Gorski served as Chief Marketing Officer and Online Business Leader at Sears Automotive Division and has held key positions at Fidelity Investments, Ford Motor Company and Toyota. In these roles, Mr. Gorski focused on innovative ways to engage customers through the use of media, advertising, promotions, shopper marketing and CRM. Mr. Gorski has a B.B.A. from Northwood University.

Prior to joining InStadium, Valente led the automotive planning teams at Mindshare New York, where he worked with Jaguar, Land Rover, and Mazda. Valente, as VP Sales Manager at ESPN's Detroit office, worked with brands such as GM, Ford, Chrysler, Goodyear, Progressive, and P&G. Before that, he served as Mediaedge's Managing Partner in their Irvine, CA office. Valente moved the business to Detroit and worked on all Ford business, including Ford of Canada, Ford Customer Service Division, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo and all Dealer Associations. Prior to joining Mediaedge, he ran all facets of the McDonald's media account at DDB Chicago. Additional accounts and agencies for which Valente has worked in a senior role are Bozell (Taco Bell), Bates (Hyundai), Y&R (Westin Hotels, Suzuki Motorcycles, KFC and Mexico Tourism), Needham Harper (Honda), and Y&R (Pabst Beer, General Foods). Valente holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication Arts from St. John's University in Queens, NY.

Prior to joining InStadium, Sherry led integrated media sales teams at Time Inc., Businessweek, Reader's Digest, Primedia, and SnagFilms, among others. Sherry also founded a branded entertainment agency that partnered with Fox, Viacom, and other clients to produce sponsored entertainment programming. Additionally, Sherry has held senior executive roles at several successful digital startups, including Valueclick. Throughout his career, Sherry's broad multimedia experience has led him to collaborate with leading national brands and their agencies to build innovative, high-impact media programs to meet their specific marketing needs. Sherry holds a B.A. In English Literature from Georgetown University.

He was instrumental in introducing multi-year corporate partners to the league to include integrated immersions into the NHL Winter Classic, All-Star Game, and Stanley Cup Playoffs with both VS and NBC Network positions. In addition, he helped the transition of the media assets of the NHL to the NBC Sports Group, with their recent 10-year broadcast rights agreement.

Before the NHL, O’Neill created the sports sales division for DirecTV, focusing on NFL Sunday Ticket and CBS’s Mega March Madness, while introducing the first interactive mosaic screen association with the USGA and ESPN's telecasts of the U.S. Open Golf Championship. O’Neill also served 10 years as Manager, Media and Marketing Partnerships at FOX Sports Net, developing the three distinct national unwired Home Team networks featuring MLB, NBA, and NHL. He began with CBS and then served as Manager Daytime Sales for ABC.

John has a BA from Boston College in economics and history and is on the advisory board of 'The Big Assist', a mid-summer exhibition of NHL, AHL, European League, NCAA, and USHL players who are native to or train in the southern CT/NYC area to raise funds to support the quality of life of individuals with spinal cord injuries.

Prior to joining InStadium, Mr. Smith spent ten years working in Major League Soccer, where he oversaw record sponsorship sales growth at D.C. United and, most recently, the Chicago Fire. While at the Fire, he was a part of the management team that opened the club's soccer specific stadium, Toyota Park, in 2006 and lead the effort to secure Best Buy as the team's first-ever jersey sponsor in 2008. Before his time with the MLS, Mr. Smith held sales and sales management roles at Host Communications in their collegiate and high school sports marketing divisions. He has a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia.

Pat broke into sports back in 1997 when he joined the Indianapolis Colts as Director of Marketing. During his tenure he helped the franchise achieve 4x growth in digital sponsorship revenues and established the Colts as a valuable marketing partner for sponsors. Under his watch the team broke new ground in social media with the first-of-its-kind, team-branded online fan community, MyColts.net and the (still) one-of-a-kind Colts-branded high school site, MyIndianaFootball.com. Pat left the Colts in 2008 to form his own consulting firm, Coyle Media. Since then Pat has counseled dozens of sports properties across the NFL, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, PGA TOUR, NCAA and beyond. During this time his Sports Marketing 2.0 conferences have catalyzed the industry, and helped to establish Pat as a leader both in the U.S. and abroad.